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May 2013

We lost the best dog on Tuesday. Emma was 15, and lived a full and long life, with a miraculous second act as a snowbird. We had a lot of adventures. She was emphatically a mutt, but had enough husky in her to love nothing more than a long ski. She hung with us all the way from Barnard to the Long Trail Brewery. (Check a map.) It was a privilege to be able to cook for when her appetite got iffy in her last weeks, and a blessing to have known her as a companion. The cinetrix and I were fortunate enough to be with her when she left us, and wherever she is, I know that stairs are not a problem for her now. Expect posting to be light for some time.

So, it says here that Googa Mooga will be different than last year. Last year, you will recall, people paid lots of money to wait in long lines for food from one of the 75 booths. But this year, Googa Mooga organizers claim, they've fixed it, because there are.... 85 booths. So, if my math is correct, you can anticipate something that is 11% less of a total fiasco! Have fun!

Over the years, the Cod has traced the back-and-forth between chefs and diners over how much say each should have over what goes on the plate. The Cod's position is here. It is, however, a game of give-and-take: if you tell Dave Chang that you like your aged ribeye well done, or tell Grant Achatz to delete mushrooms from his 37 course tasting menu, those dudes can and should run you out of the restaurant. On the other hand, there are some restaurants that feature a more collaborative relation between chef and patron, as in various burrito and wrap places where you point to items in sequence and have them inserted into your cylindrical lunch or not, depending on your preference. It's sort of like Missile Command meets salad bar. (And there are fancy restaurants that will put your dressing on the side, or believe you when you tell them you are allergic to cranberries, or whatever, and there are fast food places where how they got it is how you get it, but I digress)

Recently, back in the muchbeloved LOTB&TC, there was a misunderstanding about whose vision should prevail:

According to police, Drouin fled the station, but the employee refused to let her get away. “The sub-maker, determined not to let Drouin escape justice, gave pursuit catching up to her on Hancock Street near Quincy City Hall and holding her until Transit [and] Quincy Police arrived,” according to the report. Droiun complained of neck injuries and was transported to a local hospital. Police say the suspect told them that the “whole incident began over ‘too many pickles.’”

You are reading that correctly. Lady ordering a sub! At a Nathan's Famous! In a T station! On the Red Line! Attacks the submaker when sandwich is not prepared expressly to her specifications. How many mistakes can you count: 1) Ordering a cheesesteak not in Philadelphia. 2) Ordering a sandwich from a place known for hot dogs. 3) Eating food from a restaurant in a subway station. (I am sure there is some place like Kyoto where the best ramen in the city is in a subway station, but this is Quincy Center.) Guiteau Monday keeps rolling along, and it's not even noon.

Via Kat Kinsman, two snaps with Guiteau Monday all over them. For one thing Guy Fieri's Korean BBQ wing sauce. Something called "Korean BBQ wing sauce" is actually probably playing to Fier's culinary sweet spot, even if it has little to do w/ Korean BBQ, or wings. But! To the left, Larry The Cable Guy's Meatloaf seasoning? Also, evidently Ms. Kinsman was trapped in some sort of Island of Misfit Toys for ill-starred vanity celebrity food concepts. But it gets worse:

Presumably, there were meetings. There were focus groups. There were test batches of this that people ate. There was a marketing plan. To get people to buy Larry The Cable Guy's Beef Stroganoff Dinner. There was someone who saw an untapped market in the masses yearning to eat a meal consisting of ground beef added to a box of noodles endorsed by an entertainer with a grating faux-redneck persona. And now, this box sits on a shelf, costing a dollar, a monument to the vanity of human wishes. Also, does this mean Larry The Cable Guy is a rocket scientist? Questions to ponder on a Guiteau Monday.

1) You can get a whole lobster. For eleven dollars. In South Carolina.

2) If you are a lobster, things are not going well for you if you are in the live tank at a BiLo, and not even a nice BiLo.

3) The sign mentions they are EBT approved. EBT is basically the new version of food stamps, and there are things you can buy with these benefits (milk, cereal) and things you cannot (beer, cigarettes). The list of eligible/ineligible is here, and makes for interesting reading, if you think sad things are interesting.

My first guess on the EBT eligibility, given the aforementioned SC location, was that it was some sort of a troll, ie "A white man can't find a decent job and meanwhile Obama's cooking up lobsters for welfare queens." And it might be that. However, as the cinetrix pointed out, one upon a time, lobsters were food for the poor, so perhaps the person who did the sign is an amateur lobster historian.

So, while "Didn't have to read no Bruni" would be a line in the Cod's reboot of "It was a Good Day," we noticed folks in our feed making approving mentions of Bruni's current "Sexism and the Single Murdress." I can save you the click and tell you that he explains to us that there is a double standard in the way the media covers defendants in violent and sensationalistic murders, and moreover, slutshaming is a thing that happens:

It's important to recognize double standards that inflect our understanding of gender. At my day job, I spend some time every semester talking about the words "Coquette," and "Rake," and usually most of the kids get it before I've finished explaining, because, they, like, live it.

But good for Bruni, in that decrying slutshaming in the media is progress from someone who decided it would be fun to make fun of strippers in one of his final NY Times reviews, including an encounter with a different Foxy:

So, we should respect female murder suspects, and respect their sexuality, but by all means, let's haul out tired stripper cliches. Granted this review ran in 2007, and one hopes that Bruni, like the rest of us have grown up a little bit. It is a) worth noting that the fellow getting likes right now for sticking up for murderesses used to get paid to make fun of strippers. And b) as good a time as any to revisit the Bruni Digest's take on this review.

Meanwhile, while Longhorns clamor for excellence in education, Aggies clamor for, waffles? This is not to say that waffle irons and Bisquick are illegal in College Station, but rather that there is no Waffle House in College Station. Irony is great if you, for instance, run a restaurant with a $300 tasting menu, and pump Phil Collins all night long, or buy shirts with wolves on them, but not so great for things you actually put in your mouth. What I am driving at, here, is that Waffle House is not good, and like so many cultish regional chains, gets undue love for being regional, not national. Seeing the first or last Waffle House driving north or south is a milestone, but don't eat there. Approximately 75% of their patrons are there b/c Waffle House is a mutually inconvenient place for divorced children to swap custody back and forth, but you should not eat there otherwise.

The Aggies disagree. They have made this presentation. Considering that the Aggies are known for their paramilitary undergraduate student body, it would seem like simply invading Belguim and plundering its waffle reserves would be the way to go. But not. And they also made these shirts. Yes, these: